


What They Miss, But What They Found

by BleachStuck415



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Also season 7 spoilers obvs, Before they find out about other alteans n find matt and sam, Drabble, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Its not tagged and its not obvious but rest assured this is Hance too, Set before like. idk season 4?, Shiro/Adam (Voltron) (Mentioned), Swearing, Team as Family, ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-06 18:22:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16392782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BleachStuck415/pseuds/BleachStuck415
Summary: Each member of Team Voltron misses something - each paladin, the princess of Altea, her royal advisor. Space is big and dark and all consuming, but even so there are moments where, despite all they've had to leave behind and had taken from them, they're able to feel like a family.





	What They Miss, But What They Found

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this in the works for AGES but season 8 is coming out soon and then voltron will be over and??? I really dont know how i feel about that so. Also i wanted to get this finished before NaNoWriMo started so I have one less distraction.
> 
> Enjoy i guess!

It's a team bonding exercise - something that makes all five of them groan in despair - Lance, Hunk and Pidge externally, Keith internally, and Shiro a little bit of both. Allura's idea, obviously, but her and Coran watch from the sidelines.

"It's bonding for the _Paladins_ ," Allura had said, and at her side Coran had nodded furiously. "We cannot interfere." The Paladins themselves think its just a way for them to grow closer without the Alteans having to give up any of their own emotional and mental turmoil - which is fair enough, Lance supposes. If he'd gone through what they'd gone through, he wouldn't want to share either, Hunk thinks. It's a little bit bullshitty, but Pidge understands. It's unfair that they get to get out of this, but Allura's reasoning is logical, Keith _guesses_. Shiro wishes none of them had to do this, but he does think it's a good idea, even if Allura and Coran are abstaining.

They draw straws to see who goes first, and after the groans of displeasure and the yells of victory are over, the Team Bonding begins.

With a deep breath to steady his nerves, Lance begins.

Lance misses a lot of things about Earth. The sound of the waves crashing into the shore, the feel of the wind biting at his skin as he surfs across the ocean, the smell of salt in the air and the taste of it in his mouth. He misses lazy sunday mornings both at home and at the Garrison - of coming downstairs to help mum with breakfast, or sneaking around campus with Hunk nervously shadowing him. He actually misses the _Garrison_ too - classes were fun and intense and challenging, and he misses relaxing in the common area, gossiping about bullshit and talking about nothing in particular. He also misses his parents and his sisters and his brothers and his nieces and nephews and his grandparents. He misses the feeling of a small house being so full of people that it's almost to the point of breaking, never silent and always moving (here in space, whenever Lance closes his eyes at night he doesn't feel real. There's nothing - he can't even hear his teammates through the walls. Eventually he learns to sleep with headphones, but sometimes he's unable to shake the ringing silence and the feeling of being utterly alone).

Hunk misses his parents. Sometimes it feels like he knows his family better than he knows himself, and no one would be more worried about him than his mums. He misses the feeling of their warm hugs and the sound of their laughter. He misses having his own space to cook and create the dishes he loves. He misses having familiar ingredients. He misses learning how to cook from his mums and his uncles and he misses teaching his nieces and nephews too - misses passing on his knowledge. He misses that familiar taste of home. He misses being able to just... _relax_. Space is tense all the time and Hunk gets overwhelmed by it easily. He pushes through and he's great at managing it but space is also big and its all consuming and sometimes it can get too much. It's easier to deal with feelings of being small and with existential dread when you're on Earth and not in the deep reaches of space. Hunk misses being _just_ an engineer (piloting is amazing - especially in voltron. He's saving the universe, doing what he can in the fight. But sometimes it's lonely and it's hard - Hunk never signed up to be a pilot, and sometimes he still feels nauseous. He wants to go home).

Pidge misses her hair and her dresses. She cut off her hair and gave up her dresses to find her family. Pidge- no. _Katie_ misses her identity, too. At the Garrison she'd changed her name and Pidge Gunderson has been stuck to her since, even though everyone in space with her knows her real name. But she doesn't feel like she can go back to being Katie while she's still up here in space, searching desperately for her dad and her brother, after she left her mum behind. It's a conflicting mess of emotions - the desire to be the person she was but having the resolute determination to not be her, _not yet_. Pidge does her best to not think about it too much even though over thinking is what she's good at. She misses mum a lot too - her kind words and the smell of her perfume and the way she knew how to make Pidge's favourite hot chocolate, just the way she likes it (Pidge misses her family the most - obviously. She's terrified she'll finally be able to track down Matt and their dad only to find them dead, to find their cold lifeless bodies or a graveyard full of stone or to be offered condolences. It keeps her up at night and she wishes Kerberos had never existed).

Shiro misses his dorm room, as odd as that sounds. It was nice and quaint and he loved living there. He knew where everything was and the walls were thin enough he could occasionally hear the person living on the other side. He misses having hair all one colour. He misses having two human arms. Going into space changed a lot about Shiro - both physically and mentally. He's not the same person who left Earth for Kerberos, and he knows it. He wonders if- Shiro also misses- Well. There isn't really a lot Shiro misses, when he gets down to it. He misses Keith being a spoilt little brat, but going back to Earth won't fix that - Keith has grown up, now. He also misses his family. (No matter how much he may want to, Shiro can't talk about _him_. It hurts too much - remembering the way they left things, and how Shiro doesn't even have his ring anymore _~~something else the Galra took from him~~_. He keeps _him_  a secret, tightly guarded and close to his heart, because it hurts too much and Shiro's heart aches every time he even thinks of him)-

"I miss Adam," Keith says, disrupting Shiro's thought process and simultaneously making him feel like he's been stabbed.

"Who's Adam?" Hunk questions.

"A boyfriend?" Lance asks jokingly.

"He's-" Keith starts, but Shiro cuts in.

"Uh- no. Keith, what the fuck," Shiro says, incredulous, ignoring the whisper of 'Shiro said a bad word'. "Adam is _my_  fiance." He pushes down the twinge of hurt and regret the f-word brings.

"And?" Keith says, an eyebrow raised. "I miss him."

"Wh- I- Get your own!" Shiro says, throwing his hands up in the air. He ignores any protest Keith might have and turns to the rest of the group, their mouths having fallen open.

"I miss Adam," Shiro says, giving in, his tone softening. It hurts as soon as he says it, but he presses on. He doesn't see the triumphant grin on Keith's face, or the way his expression softens.

Shiro misses _Adam_  most of all. The man he fell in love with. The man he was engaged to. The man he let slip through his fingers because he thought going on one last space mission was worth loosing him over. Maybe Shiro thought he could patch it back together when he got back, but he doesn't remember what he was thinking. Ever since the Galra took him, some of his memories have been kind of hazy - especially the ones from just before leaving. His last memory of Adam is of him leaving their shared dorm. (He doesn't remember if Adam came to see him off. He doesn't remember if Adam came to collect his stuff from their dorm. He doesn't remember if they saw each other in the hallways after that. He only remembers Adam's hard expression with his bag slung over his shoulder and the shape of his back as he left the room and _don't expect me to still be here when you get back_ -)

So yeah. Shiro fucking misses Adam the most. So much that it hurts every fibre of his body - makes it feel like he's being stabbed repeatedly in the heart. Being experimented on probably felt a lot worse than this, but the thing about humans is that their experiences are dependent on the present and right now the emotional turmoil he feels - the way his breath catches and his lungs shudder just _thinking_  his name - is the most painful thing he's ever gone through. At least with the Galra he didn't have to think too hard because he thought he was going to die there. He wants nothing more than for Adam to take him back but he knows that he wouldn't deserve it. Adam took a lot of shit and went  _th_ _rough_  a lot of shit because of him and Shiro knows that intimately - he was there to see all of it happen. Adam was the best part of his life - not the missions or his rank or _any_  of the Garrison - _him_.

He is Shiro's biggest blessing and also his biggest regret ( _is_ , because even out here in space, Adam gives Shiro strength, even through the pain). And that's all Shiro wants to say on the matter.

Keith leans over and puts his hand on Shiro's shoulder, and on his other side Pidge interwines her arms with one of Shiro's. Hunk shuffles across next, wrapping his arms around Shiro in a gentle but warm hug. Lance moves around to be at Shiro's back, and he rests his head on Shiro's shoulder and his long arms reach out to wrap around everyone. Allura and Coran drift across the room, and Allura rests her hand on Shiro's head and Coran rubs what he can reach of Shiro's back around Lance's solid frame. They stay like that for a while, the hug for everyone as much as it is for Shiro. Eventually, they draw apart one by one and resume sitting in their circle, but with less space between them than before.

Keith misses- not a lot, really. He doesn't remember his mum very well, and his dad died before he really knew what he would be missing. He sure as fuck doesn't miss the orphanage or going through the system or having to change schools with every foster family. He does miss school, though. The Garrison, he means. It's through the Garrison he was able to meet Shiro, and then Adam too. The two of them together were a fierce parental unit the likes of which Keith had never seen before. Before he knew it, Shiro had wrangled Keith into being a student at the Garrison, and Shiro had custody over him while he was there (they were going to make it permanent, but they never got around to it before that fated Kerberos mission and The Split happened). Those years were the best of Keith's life - they almost made up for the abandonment and death of his parents and the lonely, bitter years at the orphanage. But after that, Kerberos came up. Adam and Shiro were fighting. Adam left their appartment. Shiro went _missing_. Keith couldn't stand it. He packed up his shit and went to his dad's old shed in the desert. He put together evidence. And then Shiro's pod crashed to Earth and- Keith is getting off track here. Point is, what he misses about Earth is the family he was able to find in Shiro and Adam, but with Shiro gone he couldn't have that so he had to go after him.

The room falls silent as Keith does. Each paladin had said their part - they understood each other better than they did before they started this session. Emotions were high, and some of them had tears in their eyes. Miraculously - unlike most other team bonding exercises - this one hadn't dissolved into arguments and fighting. Slowly, everyone moves forward until their circle is tiny, each of their knees touching the person's next to them.

"What now?" Lance asks softly. His hands hang off his lap into the small centre of their circle, and before long Hunk's joins them, their fingers interlocking.

"Well..." Shiro starts, and he tilts his head to look at the edge of the room, an eyebrow raising as he looks at Allura and Coran.

Allura hesitates, but Coran nudges her with his elbow, smiling gently, and then makes his way over.

"Enlarge this circle!" Coran demands. "I wish to join you on your emotional endeavors!" With a chuckle, Pidge and Hunk move to accomodate him. They leave a gap for Allura, all six of them looking to her hopefully.

Biting her lip, Allura resists for a moment longer before giving in. Maybe, she muses, it's time for her to open up. A problem shared is a burdened divided. Or whatever it is the Earthlings say. She slides in next to Coran, and Hunk pats her shoulder comfortingly. Still, she seems hesitant, so Coran clears his throat and goes first.

There are a lot of things Coran misses about Altea. Juniberry flowers are his favourite flower, but they certainly weren't the only ones there. He misses all of them - nightcress, sink flower, yellow fungus. Altea was full of wonderful and beautiful wildlife. A lot of the planet was covered in blue, whether that be from bodies of water or valleys of flowers, and Coran loved it to bits. It's where he was born - where his whole family was born. It had his entire family's history and legacy written into the very ground. His own grandfather had helped build the Castle Of Lions. He and Alfor were friends, and Coran respected him greatly - he would've followed Alfor and Melenor to the edge of the universes if they'd wanted him to. His loyalty to them and the other paladins was something he gave freely, but it was something he felt they deserved.

But then Zarkon betrayed them - he killed Blaytz and Trigel before anyone knew to stop him. Gyrgan fell next, and the last time Coran saw Alfor was when the man was pushing his daughter into a sleeping pod and then requesting Coran himself to join her, to look after her in his stead. And how could Coran just ignore such a request from his beloved king? From his friend? So he did. And when Coran next woke up, he'd lost everything (Coran knows he dotes over Allura too much, but can you blame him? He and Allura are the only members of their species alive - he has to make sure she's okay. He made a promise both to himself and to Alfor that nothing bad would happen to Allura, not if he could help it. So Coran dotes and hopes that it'll be enough).

Coran finishes speaking, and it leaves a ringing silence. He reaches out and gently squeezes Allura's hand. Sitting across from her in the circle, Lance fixes her with a comforting smile, and Keith sends her a reassuring nod. She takes a deep breath, steels herself, and begins.

Allura misses _everything_. Her father, her mother, her friends, her people. The only things she got to keep from Altea were the mice and the castle ship. The difference between her and Coran and the paladins, Allura is sure, is the fact that they all have a home to go back to. Altea is _gone_  - she can't get that back. And she knows some of her paladins have lost family members and friends throughout their lives but Allura and Coran have lost _everything_. She's beginning to forget what her mother's voice sounded like, and what her hugs felt like. She's beginning to forget what the gardens outside the palace looked like, and what the air smelt like, and what rock showers sounded like. Alone they seem like little things, but together Allura is forgetting everything Altea meant to her. The corruption of the palace crystal means that she can't even look through the memories the AI of her father had because he's gone. He's gone and the memories are gone and Allura and Coran only have each other (Allura is terrified of - one day - being the only Altean left alive. Of having to carry their people's legacy by herself. It would live and then die with her, and it's a burden she's never wanted to have. She wishes she could just go back to sleep for another ten thousand years. It's not possible, and it's an unfair thought to have - Allura owes it to her father and everyone that has died to take down Zarkon and the Galra empire and reverse the wrongs they have committed. But she just wishes she didn't have to live with the pain and guilt of being one of the only remaining members of her species still alive). She can't properly put into words how truly lonely and desolate she feels about Altea being gone.

It feels like a part of her very soul has been ripped out, leaving a forever raw and gaping wound that only an eternity could heal.

The room falls silent after her words have stilled. No one moves for a long moment, but then Lance jumps to his feet.

"Here's what I think we should do," he says, his voice soft, reflecting how emotionally raw and vunerable they all feel about putting themselves on display like that. "We go to our rooms, get all of our pillows and blankets, make a _pillow_ _fort_ , and hug the fuck out of each other."

Shiro can't even repremand him for his language. He himself had sworn earlier, and it feels justified. Carefully, he pulls his limbs free and rises as well, a small smile on his face. "I think Lance is right," he says. "As Black Paladin and leader of Voltron, I order everyone to gather materials for and build a pillow fort."

"Sir yes sir," Hunk murmurs. Lance reaches down a hand and pulls him to his feet.

"I'm not too sure what a 'pillow fort' is," Allura comments. "But I would like to find out."

"Everyone meet back in the common area?" Pidge asks. Everyone glances around at each other before nodding.

"Autobots role out," Lance mutters under his breath as everyone files out to their respective rooms.

By the time Lance gets to the common area, Allura and Hunk are moving the furniture to the side while Keith, Pidge and Coran have started constructing the fort. Everyone moves as a unit, assembling and moving as one. By the time Shiro returns with more pillows than Lance knew the castle had, the fort is mostly done.

"Where did you even find all of those?" Pidge asks from where she's already wrapped herself in two blankets, glasses balanced precariously on the tip of her nose but too comfortable to make the effort to push them back up.

"I looked through some of the other rooms on our corridor," Shiro explains. He drops the pillows on the floor in a heap, and everyone except Pidge all move to arrange them properly. With that done, everyone else crawls in.

Hunk is the one who gives in and removes Pidge's glasses for her, placing them a safe distance away from the fort. Lance immediately claims the middle spot, and Hunk slides in behind him, spooning him like they've done time and time before. Blankets upon blankets are wrapped around them, and Keith slots in in front of Lance, Pidge behind him. Shiro ends up at the edge of the fort, Allura between him and Hunk, his back to the wall and able to see everyone else even while they're all laying down. Coran pats Pidge on the head, and she shuffles closer to Keith, pressing her face into the small of his back to make more room. Keith tenses, but relaxes into it after a moment, and Coran lays at the other edge of the fort.

It's warm, Lance muses, and it reminds him of the nights his siblings would come over and he'd cuddle with his nieces and nephews and the rest of his family. She hasn't felt this comfortable in a long while, Pidge realises, and carefully doesn't think about the last time her brother had cuddled with her like this. Allura has never felt anything like this before, and it fills her with contentedness and warmth. Being part of a group cuddle is nice but not overbearing, and Keith thinks he can get used to this. Being able to relax while knowing where everyone is is nice, Shiro thinks, he hasn't been able to do this before - it fills him with a deep sense of reassurance, knowing that everyone is okay. It's nothing like the hugs Hunk has at home, but he wouldn't trade this for anything. Coran can't remember the last time he participated in anything like this - just being able to lay down with the people he cares about and not having to worry for a while. It's delightful.

It feels like a family.

They fall asleep like that, as content as they can be. In the morning, they'll have to get back up and resume their roles as paladins of Voltron and princess of Altea, pilot of the Castleship and her Royal Advisor, but for now they can rest, surrounded by the family they'd manage to form out here with nothing but space surrounding them.

.

**Author's Note:**

> I'll admit this isn't my best work but i just wanted it done, ya know? Like FUCK bdjekekwh voltron is ENDING soon and season 7 took all my hopes and dreams and stomped them into rubble and shat on them for good measure. I dont know man, i was weary of the adam announcement from the start but i gave them the benefit of the doubt and now im just Tired i guess. This is the only voltron wip i have that i actually had any chance of finishing so i pushed myself to get it done so here it is. Thank you for reading


End file.
